


No Longer Do We Wonder

by CarrieAnn



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Marriage Proposal, Season/Series 03-04 Hiatus, Season/Series 04 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 08:35:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4912582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarrieAnn/pseuds/CarrieAnn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how it goes, when they talk about forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Longer Do We Wonder

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of a melding of three different ficlets I had percolating in my head, and it ends up covering the path from roadtrip to RING to what happens after (presumably) the ring goes back in its box and O/F head back to Starling. (Title comes from January Wedding by the Avett Brothers, which is a Very Olicity Song for me.)

It started like this: two days after they defeated Ra’s, the first morning of their roadtrip, in the middle of making out with Oliver, with her eyes still closed and her lips still tingling—that was the first time Felicity talked about forever.

They’d been at this for hours. Just making out, like teenagers. They were holed up at Breezy Point, a resort on the coast, and they’d planned to check out at noon and get back on the road—maybe to Central City, if they could ever get anyone there to return their texts. But at 11:55, Oliver had called the front desk and booked another night in the little cottage.

They were limiting themselves to kissing, above the waist stuff, as they waited for word from Nyssa that the marriage had been dissolved. Felicity’s relief that Oliver had thought to make that one of his conditions for Malcolm was _just barely_ enough to outweigh her displeasure over the deal they’d made in the first place. But the... _ick_ of the whole thing had made her stop things in their tracks that first night at her townhouse, after they beat Ra’s. She didn’t want it to be that way. She wanted them to be free, utterly free, of the past nine months. Oliver understood. Maybe he even felt the same.

It was all she could do to stay strong, to wait it out, and the past 48 hours had presented a new kind of torture to add to her ever-growing list. This was a good kind—a high, keening pain, delicious and dizzying. It was crazy how much she wanted him, how much she could feel he wanted her, but there was something to be said for a good solid makeout, with no other expectations. Slow, lazy kisses; hard, intense kisses; soft, gentling kisses. And Oliver—well, Oliver was truly excellent at all of that.

So they learned to cool each other down, to slow when necessary, to pull back a little when the sexual frustration approached the point where it wasn’t fun anymore. Where it was just, you know, frustrating. They were veering closer to that moment—Felicity felt Oliver shifting his hips away from hers, and his breaths around their kisses started to sound more like huffs than sighs. She didn’t want to stop feeling his lips on hers, but she slowed down to small pecks. And then, lying on her side, temple resting on his shoulder, her mind incapable of forming thoughts outside of what was happening in that bed and what would be happening soon (though not soon enough), she said it.

“Could we maybe just do this every day, for the rest of our lives?”

It took a few seconds, long enough for the echo of that question to bounce back to her, long enough to feel the panicky urge to fill the silence. And then her eyes squeezed more tightly shut for a moment before she opened them and began her recovery attempt. “Ha, obviously, not the rest of--I mean, for one thing, I’m really excited for our trip--”

“Nope, too late, I’m canceling all our reservations,” he said with a smile, before kissing her again. Three hours later, the message they’d been waiting for landed in Oliver’s inbox, and after that, with what little brainspace she could spare for rational thought, Felicity managed to note that at no point did he appear uncomfortable with her talking about the rest of their lives. So while her little slip didn’t feel so awkward anymore, she did hope she wouldn’t repeat it.

But she would.

 

* * *

 

It happened like this: Oliver didn’t take that slip as evidence that Felicity was planning out the rest of their lives together. That would be crazy, right? If _both_ of them already knew that they wanted to be together forever?

For his part, Oliver had known, since the moment he accepted that he was in love with her, that she was it for him. That if he could ever decide to live a life as Oliver Queen, then that life would have to be with her. And he was content to wait in hope that Felicity would come to the same conclusion.

He took that first slip for what it was, filed it away, and moved on; happy to have his arms around her, happy to make her smile, ridiculously happy to be just be with her, every minute.

But eventually, the slips began to form a picture.

They were in Leon when they shared a bottle of red wine with dinner and as Felicity drained the last drop into his glass, she examined the label. “I think we should get a case of this stuff delivered every year. At least. Maybe two.”

“Absolutely,” he said. He tried to keep his smile small and neutral, but the wine was getting to him—she was getting to him—and he could feel that he’d failed.

They were leaving Italy, and Felicity couldn’t hide her sadness. “I mean, Italy is always going to be here and there are so many other places we need to see, but...this was special.” Oliver nodded, kissing her cheek, and she put on a brave face, saying, “We’ll just have to come back again—maybe like a special anni--” She stopped herself, covering with a cough. “Maybe we can stay longer in Florence. Sometime.”

Oliver nodded again, with a little half-smile. “Whatever you want.” He was already mentally planning their next trip.

They were in bed in Phnom Penh, feeling the scant breeze flow through the wooden blinds, and Felicity squirmed against him slightly. “Have you noticed that I fit, like, perfectly against you as little spoon?”

“I thought it was pretty obvious that I’ve noticed.”

All Oliver could see of her smile was her dimple. “I mean...my legs are just the right length to curl around your knees. And I’m just short enough that my head can tuck, like, directly under your chin. And--”

“And your perfect ass fits perfectly into my lap.”

“Well, I wasn’t gonna say that, but yes, that, too.” She pressed back against him with intent.

“And my arms are long enough, that I can reach just about anywhere I want.”

“Exactly--oh. _Oh_...god. What was I--I was going somewhere with--oh, right, I just think, this is hard to find—the perfect spooning partner...should probably-- _mmmmmmmm_...hold onto that forever.” He laughed into her hair, and did not say that he had every intention of doing just that.

By the time the trip ended, the slips were no longer slips. There wasn’t some magic moment, where their eyes met in heady acknowledgement that they were talking about _forever_. Felicity just stopped trying to cover over her mentions of a future together. They stopped being mentions at all, really. It just became a truth—that things would happen in the future and that he and Felicity would be together when they did. Sometimes, when she talked like that, Oliver couldn’t help but squeeze her hand a little tighter, drop his gaze to the floor, grin giddily to himself. He’d only ever held back out of concern for putting pressure on her, or scaring her off, so he was happy to follow her lead, happy to feel free to talk about their futures as joined.

Renting a place together on their return to the U.S. wasn’t even a conversation. It was a given. The only question was where. They picked the coastal suburb for lifestyle reasons. It was a low-crime, low-pressure atmosphere. People didn’t live to work; they worked to live, to support their real lives—surfing, hiking, napping on beaches, brunching on patios.

One day they were at a Buy-Rite for...well, it was supposed to be a cleaning supply run, but their shopping cart was three-quarters full and Oliver was positive there was not a thing in there that could be used for cleaning purposes. Instead, there were at least three types of candles, a couple of vases and some weird branch things, picture frames, a small rug (“For in front of the hearth, Oliver!”) tucked in on the bottom rack of the cart, and then Felicity stuffed a half dozen decorative pillows in a precarious pile on top of it all.

They came around a corner and she let out a disgusted sigh, gesturing to a display of fake Christmas trees and red-and-green decor. “I mean, they just got done with Back-to-School! Can’t Halloween have its moment before they put out all the Christmas crap?”

Oliver raised his hands, palms out. “Hey, I’m with you, but I grew up in a Christmas-crazy household. Lights were up by the first week of November.”

“Oh, yeah, I kind of forgot about that,” Felicity drawled, pursing her lips thoughtfully, hooking a hand around his elbow. “Well, you can have the rest of the house to decorate; I just need one window for the menorah.”

“Ehhhhh, we don’t need to decorate for Christmas,” he said off-handedly, steering them toward the check-out.

Felicity rolled her eyes at him. “No way. I actually like Christmas decorations! Just...in their proper time. And you are not going the rest of your life without a Christmas tree.”

She kept talking—about pulling his family decorations out of storage, something about having a basement now, something about a sensitivity to pine—but he’d stopped paying much attention. This was it. For some reason, this was the moment, the thing that convinced him that he’d waited long enough. He was going to marry her. He was going to buy a ring that week. He was going to give her the ring and ask her to say yes, and she would.

 

* * *

 

But it didn't happen like that. Oliver did buy the ring—he looked at settings and cuts until his head spun, but he found the right combination, and that was it. His hands shook when he held it for the first time, and again when he took it out the night he was going to ask her.

But then he didn’t ask. He didn’t have a chance—he missed his window—and before he could even stop to regroup, they were packing for a quick move back to Starling.

The next day, Felicity was sitting in the backseat next to him as they drove back into the city, her tablet bouncing in time with her knee as she read the coverage of PT’s move to name her CEO. Somehow the press knew they’d been away together for months. “No one we know would have talked to them—but then I guess we’re not trying that hard to keep a low profile, so it could just be someone in the neighborhood? Or someone could have just recognized you somewhere.” She bit the cuticle on her thumb for a second and then spit, “But still! I love how the story isn’t, you know, ‘brilliant young mind to be named CEO of multi-national blah blah,’ it’s ‘future Mrs. Queen takes over former Queen Consolidated,’ which, I mean— _rude,_ and sexist, and also presumptuous. And of course we’re not anywhere _near_ that point, and even if we were--” but once again, Oliver had stopped paying attention.

The ring in his pocket suddenly felt heavy, and enormous, and he was desperate to get into the loft so he could stow it somewhere, safely, until...until the moment was right. Until he felt sure again.

He would wait, as they moved into a new place together, into new jobs, a new team, a new lair. He’d wait for her to talk again about their future—about vacations and requirements for their next house and birthdays and what they’ll do when they retire. For two months, he waited for her to give him some kind of sign.

But she didn’t.

 

* * *

 

Instead, what happened was that Felicity found the ring the day they unpacked in the loft. For someone who'd once seemed an expert at hiding things, Oliver had been awfully careless to just wrap the ring box up in a black cashmere dress sock. Felicity opened the top drawer of his dresser to fit some boxers in next to his socks, and she heard the thunk as the ring box hit the side panel. She felt around for the source, found the sock, pulled the box out and opened it mindlessly—thinking it was cufflinks or something, just wanting to put everything in its particular place, hoping that feeling settled would help with the sadness over leaving their cute little house and that whole life behind. But the box did not hold cufflinks, and she could not put the ring in its place.

With hands that seemed to belong to someone else, Felicity hastily shoved the ring box back in the sock, the sock back in the drawer, the drawer back in the dresser, and then she stumbled backward until her knees hit the bed. She'd noticed the logo of a Coast City jeweler embroidered on the inside of the box.  _Not a family heirloom--it’s new--it’s mine._  Her whole body was buzzing, like she could actually feel all her blood rushing around— _this must be what drugs are like,_  she thought absently—and then her whole face broke wide open. She was smiling and also crying and  _oh shit,_  she needed to pull it together really damn fast because Oliver was coming back upstairs.

But then weeks passed—weeks in which Felicity devoted all her brainpower to preventing her traitor mouth from spilling what she'd seen to Oliver—and nothing happened. And that was...fine. Then she went to check on the ring one day and it was gone. But that was also fine. She was fine. She was sure it was all fine. And ninety percent of the time, everything was  _better_ than fine with them. But in that ten percent....They weren’t unaccustomed to disagreements, of course. Their relationship was practically founded on them. It was just that now, no matter the source of the tension, Felicity felt a shadow of something else in the background. It dissipated more slowly every time, and when it was bad, it could feel suffocating. She tried to ignore it, to not notice that every conflict felt like it was really a fight about  _them,_ to not let her insecurities well up inside her and make her question everything. 

But she did.

 

* * *

 

This is how it starts: in their new bedroom, in the middle of a fight that’s ostensibly about a mission gone nearly-awry but feels like more, Felicity blurts out, “When did you change your mind?” As soon as the words are out, she wants to reel them back in, but she can feel that it's already too late to turn back.

It’s been a bad night. When Dig, Laurel, and Thea all disagreed with Oliver’s call in the field, Felicity had to pick a horse, and she...well, she bet against green. It ended up being the right move—or at least, it wasn’t  _wrong_ —but they still had it out when Oliver got back to the lair. And that's where it should have stayed—that's the rule they established when they came back: arguments don't follow them home. But this one did, and maybe that's what rattled her.

Oliver has that cold steel thing going on, but it’s not even a challenge to see through it anymore. The mere twitch of his lip is enough to make her ill. “What are you--” he starts, voice barely above a whisper.

 _Stop NO Felicity don’t--_ “I saw the ring, Oliver.”

She's afraid she might actually vomit, or just swoon on the spot, like something out of a Victorian novel, and she can't bring herself to really look at him. She grips the edge of the footboard, and over the ringing in her ears, she can hear herself say, “At some point...you thought you wanted to marry me, and then something made you change your mind. Was it this? Moving back here? Because--” her voice breaks, “because I would quit this—the mission, the company, this whole life, all of it—if it meant--”

“No, Felicity--” There’s no cold steel facade anymore, when she looks back up at him. Just Oliver, bewildered, his eyes wide, understanding slowly settling in. “I bought the ring...but then you said we weren’t ready, and I hoped it was just...a slip, that it didn’t really mean anything. But then you just...stopped...talking about the future. About our future together.”

 _Oh God._ “Oliver...I didn’t--I was trying to be so careful, trying not to screw things up. I didn’t want you to know—to ruin whatever you had planned. And then, after a few weeks, a month, two….” Her heartbeat is already downshifting, still beating fast, but lighter, easier than before. “And there’s been all this tension--and I just thought…I thought that you must have changed your mind.”

“No,” he says firmly, quiet terror still etched across his face. “I didn’t think you wanted me to ask.”

“Oh,” Felicity exhales. She takes another breath. “I did. Do. Actually.”

For weeks, there has been a knot tightening in her chest—tangling, twisting around her heart—and _how strange,_ she thinks, that it could just melt away in moments. She’s staring at him; she can’t look away. “Do--do you? Still want to?”

“Yeah, I--” His eyes are narrowed in intensity, his whole face clenched with emotion, and then it goes slack and he shakes his head. “Wait, no--I’m supposed to--” Oliver trails off and turns, practically jogging to get to the closet.

Out of habit, she follows, watching in confusion as he pulls a pile of sweaters off of a shelf, revealing a safe she didn’t know was there. Bending around him, she sees his hand tremble as he turns the combination lock on the safe and pulls the door open. And then she straightens up, heart pounding, mouth suddenly dry, mind curiously blank except for a fleeting moment of regret at her earlier decision to change into yoga pants and a faded gray MIT tee-shirt.

Oliver turns, one arm behind his back, and clears his throat. “I was supposed to do this in some”--he sweeps his arm between them--“grand way. But I don’t”--he takes her hand in his, looking at her fingers for a moment--“I don’t think we need that. It’s a simple thing—just you and me, forever. Calls for a simple gesture.”

This is how it happens: right there, in their walk-in closet, framed by blazers and dresses and racks of shoes, Oliver drops to one knee. Felicity gapes at him for a moment before falling to her own knees in front of him, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, kissing him soundly, repeatedly, excited little whimpers punctuating each kiss.

“Feli--Felicity--” he laughs, pulling his head back with some effort. “You need to let me ask the question.”

“Oh!” she says, jumping back to her feet. “Oh God, sorry! Okay, go.”

“Felicity Smoak,” he begins, trying to straighten his face, plucking the ring from inside the box, holding it out to her, taking a deep breath, asking if she will.

Oh yes, she will.

 

_end_


End file.
